Into that Good Night

by Levis Keltner

  “Bury him, then. Alive. We won’t have to worry about blood—more blood.”

  “Damn, E.,” Tiffany said. “Just when I start hating your guts, you go and say something great like that.”

  “The hole would have to be deep, eight to ten feet,” Alex said. “It wouldn’t attract animals that way. Probably.”

  “Not here,” Josué added. “The Grove is sacred. And for cops—they will look here first.”

  “Correct,” Alex said. “On the other side of the tracks, then. It would have to be soon. If not tonight, tomorrow evening at the latest. My notes don’t show Rocky has a curfew, but we wouldn’t want—”

  “The little shit comes and goes as he pleases,” Tiffany said. “His own mother won’t miss him.”

  “We have a plan,” E. said. She hadn’t looked up from their captive. “I don’t want to make the same mistake I did in bringing him here. All of us have to agree on it. The killer talks or his arrogance kills him. Objections from the group?”

  The conversation had turned so quickly that Doug wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly, what was being asked of him. E. was a victim, of Rocky, of the Dead Man’s influence, they all were. That’s what was so wrong here. Why then was John meekly studying the faces of his friends and not stomping his feet, shouting, “Yes! Kill him!” Because he didn’t have to? John’s withdrawal infuriated Doug more than E.’s proposition because it made the boy wonder if he’d been wrong about the guy. He no longer controlled the group—E. did. How long had she been? Doug’s mouth shrank tight.

  Greg had returned, on the outskirts of the circle and hazy in the darkness. He came nearer, gradually, after every few words. “Are you guys sure about this?” he said. “I mean, are you serious about maybe killing the guy?”

  “I say we give him the night to think about it,” E. said, “and we act tomorrow night.”

  “The guy’s acting like he’s dying. He could be dead by the morning.”

  “We don’t know that for sure. We know he’s been messing with our heads for weeks. Now he wants us to believe he’s dying after a few punches. What do you think he’d do the moment we cut those ropes if he had his knife?”

  “I hear you,” Greg said. “But—what if he does die? Are you—is everyone here—gonna be cool with that? Dougy?”

  The others looked for Doug behind their leader. His glasses glinted white with firelight.

  “It’s the least he deserves after what he did to Erika,” E. spoke for him.

  Greg rejoined the circle. “I want it to be over. Erika, him, all of it.”

  “It soon will be.”

  “Yeah,” said Tiffany.

  “Further objections?” E. said.

  They shook their heads, grim, resolute.

  “John?”

  But for Doug and the tied-up kid, John Walker was the last left sitting around the fire. He talked with his chin dropped, head turned to one side. He didn’t raise his eyes, which made it impossible to discern whether they were open and pensive or clamped in pain.

  “The trees hold their breath,” he said.

  The woods were silent, breezeless, as if they too waited for a thunderclap, some divine threat of doom or cleansing flood because of their pact. Intense quiet pressed in on all sides. The group wondered if it were simply too difficult to hear anything over their pounding hearts. They searched the dark and returned to each other’s faces, firm in their decision and unfazed by the possibility that there were no woods at all. They might have been at the bottom of an ocean trench or on a high tower on another planet or beyond space and time altogether. They were a ring around a steady fire, the air between them charged with a bond impossible anywhere but this place that was their own, and they were not afraid.

  “Tomorrow,” E. said, “we’ll make our own fate.”

  The group re-gagged Rocky. His brows furrowed, and he protested in muffled barks. His chest swelled against the restraints. He shook, futilely. Sucks of breath and a hearty, muted ha-ha-ing followed, the captive either wildly amused by his misfortune or determined to belittle his captor’s advantage. As they packed to leave, without trying to acknowledge him, not their slightest movements seemed to escape Rocky’s wild, wide-open gaze.

  It was decided someone should remain to stand guard overnight. Greg volunteered. Tiffany said she’d stay to keep him company, presumably to talk over the breakup. When John said that it was better he himself stay, having already delivered an excuse to his parents for not returning home, no one protested. Their former leader seemed to need some time alone in the woods. Alex, who’d made a similar excuse, insisted on keeping watch with him, however, as if harboring doubt of his loyalty. Josué agreed to relieve them in the morning.

  “It’s ditch day tomorrow, no?” he said.

  The group’s conversation lightened. Tomorrow was eighth-grade ditch day, though the rest agreed to go to school to avoid suspicion, and how awful would it be to sit over an hour on the hard bleachers during a bogus award ceremony for people who tried too hard to be liked—no offense, John—and thank god it was the last week before summer break or otherwise, Tiffany said, she just might die. They decided to celebrate their total freedom this weekend after the completion of the rituals, when all had walked in the sky alone so that they would never have to be alone again. They would potluck and drink and dance under the full moon.

  “Kinda sad, though,” Tiffany said. “It’s the end.”

  “No,” E. assured her, “the Watchers of the Grove are just beginning.”

  2

  “We’re not actually going to kill the guy. Right?” Doug said to E. on the other side of the creek.

  They’d caught the killer. This fight was over. No longer a need for traps, the others ran ahead to disarm them with Alex’s help and to mark a path around ones not easily disabled. The kids went shoving and laughing, excited for tomorrow’s celebration. What Doug didn’t feel. The eyes of their flashlights flew through the trees. Their bodies merged with the night. Their laughter shimmered across the valley.

  Doug looked back at the captive, bound across from John. Rocky watched him and E. with serpentine focus. His narrowed eyes were glossy.

  E. deeply exhaled. She jabbed her staff into the ground and patiently took hold of Doug. Not by the hands as on the train bridge. She clasped his arms.

  “I know our plan sounds wrong,” she said. “It’s not one hundred percent right. But you see—he’s not remorseful.” E. gestured openly at the captive. Rocky’s head was hung now. He coughed on the gag. Strands of phlegm spurted out the sides and dangled. “He never will be. You know that’s true. Even if he does admit to it, can we let a monster like that loose? He killed my sister. He’s evil. He’ll kill again. Locking him up won’t right his wrongs. Not for me it won’t. Ridding him from the world is the only way we can be free. And, after another kid is found in the woods, the developers will be forced to go away. Nobody will want to live here but us.”

  “That’s not you talking. John—”

  “It’s me.” E. pulled him close. Her arms snugged around his shoulders. “If you meant what you said on the bridge, about me marching to my own drummer, how can you think differently now?”

  Doug couldn’t think of the answer. He felt E.’s breath, smelled the smoke in her hair. The girl he’d wanted for so long. His glasses slipped down his nose and he inched back to fix them, scared of what was happening but not wanting to miss anything. E. reached the frames first. She set them on his head.

  She examined him fully and said, “Handsome.”

  Her affection felt real. It was. Doug wanted to cry. Not because it had been so long in coming. He wasn’t sure he deserved it.

  “When we fought in your driveway,” she said, “you asked me to think about what would happen when John’s gone. I have. We all have. He’s gotten us a long way from where we started. But we don’t need him, anymore. That was the point of the rituals, learning how to stand on our own. The train bridge was your walk, Doug. You faced y
our fear and beat it. John would never say it, but the Big Tree doesn’t matter. John wouldn’t say or do a lot of things. You know, he wouldn’t help us against the murderer? You proved that you’re braver than he is. That’s the truth about you and why I need you. To take his place at my side. You want that, don’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “You love me.”

  “I really do,” he said.

  “Then if you love me—me-me—here I am.”

  She kissed him. Her lips moved over his, sipped him at first, then opened, wider, tasted him, took him inside of her and didn’t spit him out. That primal gesture, the bliss of being accepted, cleansed Doug of his concerns about the captive, that he’d ever worried about anything. It didn’t last long. The feel of E. and her stilted advances were so different than with Tiffany, and Doug struggled to appreciate the details. E.’s much fuller chest squashed against his, smotheringly. And instead of meeting from opposite ends of the world as equals, E. seemed to work away at his face, as if steadily devouring him headfirst. Doug was soon sweating hard and no longer wanted to be in her arms, unless it was to break down and cry. For the first time since Tiffany had left him, he was grateful for their time together, for learning how to make out, as it allowed him to perform the act without having to lead with his heart. The boy tried to lose himself in the moment, but his sexual desire kept edging the high-adrenaline terror of being in the passenger seat of a car that E. was steering off a cliff. The killer—maybe it was Rocky, but maybe not—had almost gotten away with Erika’s gruesome death, so why wouldn’t seven much smarter kids get away with a clean, well-planned murder for a good cause? Doug caught the thought mid-slice through his mind and was stopped still, literally left stiffly clutching the back of E.’s T-shirt, benumbed by how killing another human was so simple. Maybe it was a symptom of the woods, living away from the world so long. He tried to imagine himself back in the regular world, a year from now on an average day among the rows of a high school history class, taking notes, preparing for a test as a young man who’d killed somebody, as a killer-killer. Not just in that moment, but every day, for the rest of his life, going through what everybody does—driving, having sex, losing jobs—as a killer. For always. He wouldn’t be alone. He’d have the group to suffer guilt with, to lean on in moments of excruciating regret, E. to help him sleep, to tell him he was OK, that they were all OK and that he’d done good, as she did now, stroking his arm (you’re OK), putting her lips on him again (you’re good), and sharing her body (you’re one of us), drawing him out of his thoughts.

  “Eeeeeee! Eeeeeeeeee!” the others called from up the path. They needed her to help locate a lost punji trap. She went ahead with her staff. Doug offered his flashlight. Stopping to check, he’d forgotten his things at camp.

  “I don’t need one anymore,” she said traipsing backward. She smiled and faded to black after a few steps. If bravery made it possible for her to pass through the trees unburdened by the potentially horrible consequences, Doug still didn’t have that. He turned back to camp for his stuff.

  Rocky nodded, as if having anticipated Doug’s return. Doug ignored him.

  Behind John, a triangular stack of logs waited to keep him and Alex warm overnight. The Dead Man hadn’t set any on the fire, which had gone to coals with a smoldering underbelly. He didn’t acknowledge Doug. He faced the pit but stared into the darkness up the creek with the faraway look he’d worn on the train bridge that afternoon. Doug hunted around his seat for his backpack three times. That he was disturbing the Dead Man during a moment of reflection was confirmed when the guy lowered his head and, with a shudder, sounding irritated, told him the bag was where E.’d been standing.

  Doug had beaten the Dead Man at last. He’d gotten the girl. Despite his many shortcomings, he’d won. But he didn’t feel good about it. He felt responsible for John’s melancholy and almost thanked the guy, not for the help, but for not dating E. simply because he could’ve. Any way he framed the words in his mind (“Thanks for having the compassion to reject this girl who’s been everything to me”), he either lowered E.’s worth or raised John’s to uncomfortable levels. Just the thought of talking personally with a kid who’d had his own mortality on his mind for over a year made Doug shrink inside with shame. His romantic feelings for E., the biggest thing that’d ever happened to Doug, was pathetic beside the guy’s life-or-death bout with cancer. Doug considered apologizing for having reclaimed the girl’s affection, an even stupider sentiment. Then he almost owned up to coining John’s unfortunate nickname. Doug lingered beside the fire, irritated that he cared what the guy was feeling. He unzipped and dumped his bag, searched it for the flashlight, and found it immediately. Then he repacked the bag and pretended he’d lost something else he badly needed.

  Over his shoulder, the captive called his name through the gag, “Dhhhhhk. Dhhhhk!”

  Doug turned his back on him.

  Rocky laughed with a wet munching sound, as if chewing the gym sock as a late-night snack, his last meal.

  John couldn’t be upset about losing E. He was the one who’d avoided taking their relationship to the next level. Why then did he look so miserable? Doug felt amazingly dumb. It was as if he hadn’t understood the guy from day one. He’d gotten the group to devote their lives to the woods, to never leave his side. What more did he want? To live forever? John’s gloom spoiled the sweet, wet straw scent of E. on Doug’s skin. He needed to hate John now. No matter how much he wanted E. to be the girl he’d first fallen in love with, despite her insistence that wanting Rocky to die was smart and just, Doug had to admit she’d been altered by the Dead Man’s influence, corrupted by his ritual, his Work. Doug had defeated the leader of the group he feared only to start dating the leader of the group he feared. Like some twisted magic act, the joy in getting what he wanted most had disappeared. That was John’s fault.

  “You should be happy. You got what you wanted,” Doug said bitterly, not caring whether John would misinterpret him or be hurt.

  Doug properly re-stuffed his bag when the comment didn’t earn a reaction, not a single lift of his chin or tilt of his head, no sign the guy had heard him. John wasn’t sleeping. Doug could see his open, unblinking eyes. Doug zipped up the backpack and strapped it to his front, how he wore it when feeling vulnerable, and clicked on the flashlight to leave, pestered by the thought that he might’ve actually lost something after dumping the bag repeatedly, when John jolted and asked:

  “Would you still be here if E. didn’t want you?”

  “I love her,” Doug said. “I can’t just turn it off. I’ve tried.”

  “I know,” John said.

  “You know everything. Sorry. I forgot for a second.”

  “If it were up to you, what would you do with the captive? If E.’s opinion of you wasn’t your only concern.”

  “Whose opinion should I be concerned about? Let me guess,” Doug said. “You know … I’m so—I’m done fighting you.”

  “You must be as tired of it as I am.”

  “I don’t want things to be this way. I don’t want to do anything. That’s the thing. I’m not a fighter. But you keep coming at me, asking me to do things I can’t, to be things I’m not.”

  “You’re fighting yourself.”

  “Stop it,” Doug said. “I meant what I said. I’m not listening anymore. I don’t care about you or this place. After tomorrow, me and E. are going to be together.”

  “Someone has to die to make that happen,” John said, not a decree. He was putting into words what Doug couldn’t say.

  “You started it. Don’t come asking me now to do something because you feel bad about what you did.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I am? Right. I’m right, and I’m going home. Then I’m forgetting everything you made us do here.”

  “Listen to yourself. There’s time. You can fix this.”

  “Bye, John.”

  “Forgetting is a battle you can’t win.”

&nb
sp; “I beat you, didn’t I?”

  John looked into the fire. His back curled worse and he planted his elbows on his knees. The guy began to cry. Not a hard sob. He didn’t make any noise at all. His eyes moistened, shined, but didn’t shut. A few tears dropped into the dust at his feet. Doug had wounded him, though not this much. Maybe he was upset over losing control of the group. If as wicked as Doug had believed, he would scheme revenge, not slouch with pained eyes at a dying fire. There was more going on inside the guy than Doug had cared to imagine, and his conscience, not wanting to leave John broken to pieces out here, kept him from running ahead with the others, from starting over by forgetting the guy completely.

  “I can’t care about you,” Doug said. “You’ve lied to me too much.”

  “I never lied about your importance,” John said. “You were always our most valuable player. You still are.”

  “Have you ever … I’m sorry, but maybe it’s the meds or—have you thought …? Maybe you’re wrong.”

  “All the time. About everything we do here. That I do—that I’ve ever done.” John laughed despairingly. “I’ve doubted you. I’m doubting you now. But the trees never have. You were meant to be here,” he said, again serious. “And you have a life after this.”

  “You do, too. Right?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I wanted all of us to stay. No one’s ready. The game’s not over, but it’s my last inning playing in it.”

  It was the loneliest thing Doug had ever heard in his life. Leaving John that night wasn’t easy, alone with the killer, across from one another like chess pieces locked in eternal stalemate, waiting for a big hand to knock one of them down, one much larger than Doug’s.

  3

  The awards ceremony was held each year on the half-day before graduation. Whatever the original purpose, the ceremony decorated the most freakishly talented and popular kids at Palos Junior High with medalled ribbons and embossed certificates testifying to their superiority, typically before a large number of empty rows, as it was also eighth-grade ditch day. This year’s ceremony was atypical in several respects. For one, the rows became so tightly packed that, as full classes continued to stream in from homeroom, Mrs. Shepard shrieked her whistle and directed kids to form additional rows on the floor, doubting the constitution of the creaking bleachers built well before she was born. Also, John Walker wasn’t present, which sent waves of jocular concern over how Principal Pope would announce the biggest awards, having never paid attention to anybody else. There was a current of anticipation that this ceremony would be different, not to be missed, heightened by the restlessness of so many kids crazed by summeritis and a forecast of light rain for the rest of the day.